On another note, round robins have to be complete and not partial. With this rule team A and B play the exact same teams the exact same number of times. This is one reason why head to head has less relevance. In the NFL, two teams tied for their division have played different teams, therefore head to head has more significance.

Actually in our leagues, round robins are not always complete.

In certain cases like if there is 8 teams, we play everyone once, but then we split the division up into 2 4 team halfs and you play the other 3 teams in your "half" another time around. (so that equals 10 matches)

But they made a rule that if you end up in the bottom (loser's) half of the flight, you CAN not win your division or go onto the playoffs no matter what crazy math anomaly would occur so I suppose that still amounts to your 4 eligible contenders playing the same exact teams the same number of times.

Otherwise I agree with you, individual wins should be more important then head to head because of your reasoning.

Besides that though, these "individual wins" are ACTUAL TENNIS MATCHES, they are not merely points like in a baseball game, or touchdowns or baskets or anything.... So they should be a lot more important, at the least they should be the 2nd thing you'd consider.

(if you want to do team wins first at all which in some cases like a playoff make sense, but in some cases like a local league it's a matter of preference)

Thanks for the input Javier. That is a way around the USTA rule. So you play part of the season as a single flight, and then split up to sub flights, then there is a playoff between the subflights?

I admit, I never heard it done like that. We will sometimes break the flight unevenly. For instance if you have 15 teams, have a flight of 9 and 6 with the 6 playing two round robins and the nine playing one.

Are the subflights determined randomly or do initial standings affect anything? Is it a whole new flight name? I am just asking from an LLC standpoint, it seems like a lot of work; and I'm trying to understand how its done without the teams re registering.

Thanks for the input Javier. That is a way around the USTA rule. So you play part of the season as a single flight, and then split up to sub flights, then there is a playoff between the subflights?

I admit, I never heard it done like that. We will sometimes break the flight unevenly. For instance if you have 15 teams, have a flight of 9 and 6 with the 6 playing two round robins and the nine playing one.

Are the subflights determined randomly or do initial standings affect anything? Is it a whole new flight name? I am just asking from an LLC standpoint, it seems like a lot of work; and I'm trying to understand how its done without the teams re registering.

Here's how it works for 8 teams:

You play everyone once which is your first 7 matches.

Then depending on where you are in standings you get split into two "sub-flights". (that's probably a good name for them except that there is such a thing as a real sub-flight and our coordinators dont use that feature)

Then you play everyone else in your subflight which accounts for your final 3 matches.

And the rule is if you are in that "loser's" end of it, you are not allowed to advance to any post season play, so that eliminates the need for any playoff between subflights. (sometimes teams in that round will end up as high as 3rd place visually in tennislink but I feel because of this rule Id say they still finished in 5th)

It also keeps with your idea that teams 1-4 will of technically played the same exact teams as each other.

It has some logistically issues though. Since you dont really know who or where you are playing for the final 3 matches, you dont get a schedule for that until the day after that 7th match.

And then you're off on a mad dash to find tennis courts at the last minute, especially if you have a home match in week 8. (if you played a team away the first time, you play them at home the 2nd time around and vice versa, but since you dont know who you are playing you dont know if you need courts, etc....)

But that's the best we can do, because our stupid Mid_West section playoffs are so unnecessarily too early, it only gives us a 10-11 week window of good weather to get the season in, and it's better then playing only 7 matches.

And Ideally I always hope they can split the flights up into 6 teams divisions which works a lot nicer, but sometimes the numbers just dont add up that way.